IS THAT BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?!? Special Screenings

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director Elvis Mitchell and moderator David Fincher.

With candor and a vital, unapologetic insight, film critic Elvis Mitchell takes us on a journey through the films that shaped him, those Hollywood-produced depictions of the Black experience that have always had an inordinate power to shape perception – for better or worse. Challenging the established canon and the very idea of what constitutes a “classic,” Mitchell masterfully delves into Hollywood’s fraught relationship with Black brilliance. From the silent era and the industry’s retreading of films like SHOWBOAT to the cultural revolution, lit by 1971’s SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG and SHAFT, these are the movies that helped set off a movement which, at long last, allowed Black talent to exercise control over story and image. Featuring lively and insightful interviews with legendary figures such as Harry Belafonte, Whoopi Goldberg and Samuel L. Jackson, Mitchell produces a sharp, fresh and loving tribute to Black cinema as a repository of hope, and to a community that demands to be heard and seen on its own terms. –Cedar Sherbert